| After eating a leisurely breakfast at Bob Evans this late morning, the husband and I went shopping for groceries at Meijer. All the new good electric carts were taken so I had to use one of the lower seated old ones that hurt my knees more but what else I could do. It's a Saturday and busy. We get done with our shopping and I start looking for a shorter checkout line while Bill goes to get a regular grocery cart to put our groceries in to wheel them out to the parking lot. There are lots of checkout lanes open and most of them are lined up with people. I lucked upon one where the cashier was standing at the end of her checkout aisle waiting for some customers. She had her back to me. I pulled a quarter of the way sideways into the lane and so I can get her attention and ask her if she's the lady who's running that register. Before I can speak, she spots me and heads to the front where the register is and tells me to come on in. Before I can go on in, some white-haired jerk in a blue striped shirt muscles his way in front of my cart, clanging against my metal basket, and forges in first. I'm tired of rudeness like that, if you may remember my encounter with the lady at the post office a few weeks ago, so I spout off at him.
"That's nice, just go on ahead of me like that." He tosses back at me, "I only have two items." To which, I reply, "Yeh, but you could have asked if I minded." Imagine my surprise when he gets hotheaded and starts backing himself and his cart out of the aisle all the time spewing at me, "Fine, you can have it. It's yours since you want it so bad." I, in the meantime, had pulled halfway into the checkout aisle and am blocking his way. I tell him, "No, you go on ahead." And he angrily throws back at me, "No, you have can have this aisle all to yourself. It's yours," and he tries to push against my heavy motorized cart to get out of there. Finally, I put my cart in reverse to let him out but I'm still saying to him that he can stay there and check out, all I was asking for was a little bit of politeness about it. He absolutely won't have anything more to do with that lane or me. He manhandled his cart against mine and huffily scuffled down to the other end of the checkout lanes. I'm not sure how many people have witnessed the altercation but I'm hoping a lot of them have. At that point, I'm feeling huffy and thinking that I certainly don't want that checkout line either, humph. Somehow, almost miraculously, I saw that another woman was at the register and checking out her few little items. She must have snuck in while I was being forced to let the jerk back out. No one was behind me so I reconsidered my position and decided to stay. Why spite myself over his reaction? Again, I'm glad I spoke up because instead of feeling righteous I would have been simmering the whole time I had to sit behind that guy and wait for him to get finished. Bill came along with a regular cart and I told him about the incident. Then as he piles the groceries into that cart I decided to take the cart I'm riding back down to get plugged in. The space where they are kept is right in front of the bank window and there was a long line standing in front of where I needed to go. The line moved up one space and I found a hole to start backing up. I had to stop because someone with a full cart couldn't wait for me to maneuver and went between me and the end of the bank line. Then another person did the same. I thought that I finally had an opening and started backing up again. I wanted badly to get out of the way. And who should that next person be that couldn't see what I was doing and just had to push on through? Yep, that jerk again. I nearly ran into the side of his cart as he pressed between me and the last person in the bank line. I threw my hands up in the air and in an exaggerated voice said, "Oh, excuuuuuse me, I'm soooooo sorry for getting in your way." He kept on going but couldn't let the chance pass to mutter a few more righteous words of his own like, "You ought to be..." or something like that. When Bill caught up with me, of course, I related to him my second encounter with the jerk after I was finished telling the store greeter about it. Bill had caught a glimpse of him and swore that the guy wasn't quite right in the head. I didn't get that impression. I just thought he was in an extreme hurry and pissed off about all the long lines in the store. But Bill could have been right. This is probably totally unrelated but it does make me wonder. Are people more grumpy lately and rude because of the state of our country, because they are worried about the economy, because they are frightened at how much higher the cost of gas could be going, and feeling beaten down by the constant mud flinging that's going on between the candidates running for president? Well, if they're not, I am. But that hasn't let me forget the basic principles of being polite and being nice to other people. But I am a different breed than most Americans. I'm a dying breed. I still believe in Superman and truth and justice and the American way... |